Israelis head to the polls on October 27 in the first election since the genocide in Gaza and the wars on Lebanon and Iran, a vote widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule. Since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, has passed or advanced a wave of laws and motions affecting Palestinians, from rejecting their statehood and backing annexation of the occupied West Bank to cutting off the aid they receive. Israel’s Jewish-led opposition casts itself as the alternative to Netanyahu’s right-wing government, but when it comes to Palestinians, the two often vote as one.
Left and right are the most common way of mapping where parties stand on a political spectrum. The left generally favours more state spending and is more liberal on immigration and minority rights. The right generally favours lower taxes, tighter borders and a cohesive national identity.
In Israel, the labels work differently. They are defined less by economics than by the conflict with Palestinians. Broadly, the left has been associated with territorial compromise and negotiations, and the right with opposing a Palestinian state and supporting the growth of illegal settlements.
Israel’s political spectrum as a whole has shifted right, with once-fringe positions on Palestinians now very much the mainstream view. According to Palestinian political analyst Ehab Jabareen, much of Jewish Israeli politics now works from “assumptions that would have been treated as right-wing a generation ago”. The chart below shows generally where each party sits on that spectrum today.
No party has ever won an outright majority in Israel’s Knesset. To govern, a prime minister needs at least 61 of its 120 seats, which means building a coalition of smaller parties, often with competing demands. That gives small parties outsized leverage: if one walks out, the government can fall.
After the November 2022 election, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud, the largest party with 32 seats, formed a 64-seat coalition. Its partners were two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, and the far-right Religious Zionism alliance, a joint list of the Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties. It was Israel’s most right-wing government to date.
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